Is the Cult of Karl Rove Over?

The GOP’s master of spin might have spun his last web with an election-night rant on Fox News. Now, even Rove’s allies say it’s time he called it quits, reports David Freedlander.

In the days leading up to November 6, Fox News colleagues of Karl Rove would routinely ask him—off camera—if he really, truly believed Mitt Romney would win the presidency. They wanted to know if Rove actually thought Romney would win 285 electoral votes and eke out a popular-vote victory, or whether the master of spin was merely spinning—spinning on behalf of a campaign he had raised so many millions to help win.

But no, Rove insisted, no matter how many times he was asked: No spin. Romney is going to win.

Rove apparently continued to believe his own story until the actual story was over, when his own network called Ohio and thus the election, for President Obama. The moment was vintage Rove—questioning the accepted wisdom, poring over numbers, and asserting he had top officials in the Romney campaign on the other line.

Now that his powers of prediction have proved to be as misguided as his political acumen, some longtime Republicans are saying that the age of Rove might finally be over.

4. The Law of Dimishing Returns

I think the old Atwater/Rove machine is finally sputtering to a halt. It killed Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry. But, as we know, nothing lasts forever. The Democrats have finally learned how to play their game and people are finally getting hip to the Republian murder machine, enough to be able to counter their evil.